“Rather than boring, quotidian sex, I fucked her like a third wife,” Kenny says. Maybe he forgets, but he repeats these exact words when recounting his conquests. They are boring to Jeremiah Brisbane, but he listens to the varying tones in Kenny’s voice, his body language, the story beneath the words. He doesn’t think Kenny is happy or good. It is all, as King Solomon said, meaningless.

Kenny was sweet as a child, their mother liked to point out. Maybe a demon possessed him at the point of puberty?

It is unclear to Brisbane why being good matters so much to him. The reason is lost in his childhood memories. When he read Emerson, he found himself agreeing that the essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. But the problem is how to be virtuous. All Brisbane can find is contextual goodness, relative virtue, barely concealed self-interest; nothing universal.

Being good would not be enough. He’d have to stay good, and, life being what it is, he’d be drawn into some form of evil or anti-goodness at some point or the other. Then, when his life is examined, he wouldn’t be considered good. The pressure of living is the pressure of the reader of a story who wants something to go awry, otherwise what’s the point?

Question unanswered, Brisbane decides to become a teacher. He trains for it, and then thinks of the most remote place he can go to practise his calling.

At the time, the Tehani were looking for knowledge workers to support their Exotic mining and processing business. Brisbane applied.

He felt good.

“Does anybody know?” asks Brisbane.

Two of the kids in Brisbane’s class didn’t make it, no notes from their parents.

Is it bad that he is happy because it’s only two? A week earlier had been the worst: an average of five students a day disappeared. And “disappeared” is often, but not always, a euphemism for “died”. The others are dying.

All Brisbane’s students look older than he does. It’s amazing that they even still come to lessons and don’t lose themselves in dissipation, this being the Last Days and all. None of them seem inclined to answer the question, though.

“Anybody?” asks Brisbane.

Ah, someone raising a hand. Eddie Shaw. Good kid. Wait, no, that’s just a muscle spasm. Damn.

“All right, people, just think. What Clever Else said wasn’t particularly clever, but she was able to infect the others – the maid, the servant, her mother – with a deep sadness all predicated on the theoretical fall of a pickaxe. Else was infective, spreading sadness like a virus. Then she was never seen again because she could not remember who she was.”

No reaction.